"You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one."
-John Lennon, "Imagine"
I recently spent three days at
Omega Institute for the sixth annual
Mindfulness and Education Conference: Bringing Mindfulness to Children Grades K-12.
I had wanted to attend the conference for the past few years but this
year received a full scholarship that finally made it possible. My guess
is that about 300 people attended the conference, and it was powerful
to gather with that many like-minded educators who value holistic
education, social-emotional learning, and mindfulness. Actually, I've
never experienced anything like it! I have a few friends online who
teach in schools committed to a holistic approach to education, and the
college
from which I received my master's degree offers a holistic,
student-centered educational experience and a faculty that attracts a
diverse and alternative-minded student body. One faculty member
literally "wrote the book" (several, actually) on holistic, progressive,
and alternative education. It's been eight years since I completed the
program, and it was my last experience of being in community with so
many like-minded educators until going to Omega this summer. For the
past few years, I have felt like a fish out of water in the current
educational environment and have questioned how much longer I can
continue in the profession. I attended the conference hoping to connect
with kindred spirits and to be inspired.
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| Buddha outside Ram Dass Library, Omega Institute |
A passion for social-emotional learning brought me to the teaching profession in the first place. After trying to implement the
MindUP curriculum in my classroom
for the past three years with limited success, I was in need of practical
suggestions. Is it
possible to implement such a curriculum
successfully without support, given the present realities of public
education? How do you fit it into an already packed school day?
Keynote speakers included
Jack Kornfield,
Amishi Jha, and
Daniel Rechtschaffen. Social-emotional learning expert,
Linda Lantieri,
also was scheduled to present but was unable to attend due to health
issues. I took so many notes at the conference, and there is so much I
want to share, but I am organizing this post around the ideas that stood
out the most for me, indicated in bold. Clicking on the numerous
hyperlinks included throughout the text will provide you with a wealth
of information about mindfulness in education if you are are interested
in learning more about it. I'm also including a list of book
recommendations at the end.
The major understandings and inspirations I took away from the conference are as follows:
Mindfulness must be wed with compassion.
It's not mindfulness
unless it's also heartfulness! Teach children to discover their worth,
to value one another, to befriend themselves. Honor them by holding a
beam of love and understanding. Teach them not only how to calm their
mind and focus their attention but also how to be wise and loving
beings.
Mindfulness and compassion training should not
be something you're
forced to do but an invitation to well-being. It is a process of paying
kind attention. The teaching of mindfulness and compassion is not
religious; it promotes the development of
universal human values, or what H. H. the Dalai Lama refers to as
secular ethics. It is about teaching children and teachers to train their mind, regulate their emotions, and be more loving and compassionate.
Establish
the classroom as a place of mindfulness, for tending and befriending
ourselves. Consider beginning mindfulness exercises with a bell or a
poem. Depending on the needs and energy of the group, there are times
when sitting, walking, or heart practices are best.
Trace thoughts and feelings to the body.
Mindfulness of thoughts and feelings must be traced to the body - to where you
feel them. One way to practice this with children is to put your hand in the air (where the thoughts are), and trace thoughts
down the arm to the part of the body they're attached to. The first step is noticing the thoughts and
tracking down to the sensations in the body. The next step is to bring self-care to the body. Our body needs so
much love and compassion when our head is spinning!
I
realized that I tend to live in my head. Since the conference, I have
reminded myself to drop down into my body, and it is a powerful
practice! I did this once in a doctor's office when I was in the midst
of my "white coat" anxiety habit (in which my body seems to have a mind
of its own), and the results were quite profound. Another time, I was
awakened during the night by a thunderstorm, and immediately my mind
started spinning. It was right after the conference, and my mind was
trying to make sense of why I experienced such an emotional response to
the conference. (More about that later.) Within a few minutes, my mind
had created a tidy theory and was quite pleased to have wrapped it up so
nicely. But there still was tension in my body. Then I remembered to
sink into my body and practice mindfulness - to feel the sensations and
hold them in kindness and compassion. A storm had come along, and I got
caught up in a whirlwind of thought for a while, until I remembered and
practiced - and quieted my mind. A couple hours later, I was awakened by
another clap of thunder, and my immediate response was to practice. It
was as if the thunder clap was a meditation bell! I sank down into my
body and felt the sensations, thus strengthening that response. And that
is what it is all about. Making an analogy between meditation and
exercise, one of the speakers at the conference said that each time you
bring your mind back is the equivalent of one rep. I love that.
I've
also found that sometimes it helps to physically touch the place in
which I experience the sensation in my body - for example, putting a
hand on the solar plexus (where I often feel a stab when I remember my
mom has died) or the heart. When I am falling asleep, I sometimes like
to rest one hand on the pelvic valley and the other hand on the solar
plexus and become aware of the wave of breath between those two areas.
It is like ocean waves and is so calming. Likewise, you can teach
children to focus on their breath by inviting them to put one hand on
their heart and the other on their belly.
Create a safe place.
Establish safety first! Do whatever you can
to help a child feel emotionally safe and relaxed and present in their
bodies. We must get kids into a place where their parasympathetic
nervous system is in control so they can grow and learn. Help them to
understand that they are not alone in their suffering - that we are all
in the same boat! Help them to see that other children have divorced
parents, have felt bullied, have fears, etc. Let them see each others'
beauty and troubles. Teach them of their own goodness and vulnerability.
Teach them mindfulness and heartfulness when they're calm. Young
children need to learn what it
means to "pay attention."
Include movement first.
Younger children have so much energy
that you need to allow them to
release a little through physical movements before asking them to sit
and breathe. Include a movement activity before attempting seated
mindfulness practice. When kids are antsy throughout the day, do yoga
poses.
I find this is also true for myself. It's always
easier for me to do seated practice following yoga or another form of
physical exercise.
Begin with yourself.
For years, I have struggled with how
to teach focused awareness to a whole group of children - some of whom
struggle with attention control
or can't sit still - without any assistance in the classroom. When I try
to lead a core practice in mindful awareness, inevitably one or two
students will effectively sabotage the whole experience by acting out,
seeking attention, etc. For example, in the MindUp curriculum, there is a
daily core practice of focused listening (to the sound of a resonant
bell) and deep, belly breathing. Each year, I have grown weary of trying
to manage behavior throughout mindfulness practice - and abandoned it
altogether because the behavior management is so exhausting. But I
always was pleasantly surprised when some children later begged to
listen to the bell ring because "We haven't done it in a long time."
They must like how it feels to do the practice, and I don't want to
allow the behavior of a small minority to ruin the experience for the
whole!
One of the biggest realizations I brought home
from the conference is that if you can't control anything else in your
school environment, the most basic step you can take is to
maintain a daily mindfulness practice.
Even if I'm teaching in an environment that doesn't actively embrace
the benefits of mindfulness, I can do it in my room, in whatever
capacity I can manage. Some years I might be able to do more than
others. The first step is for
me to practice mindfulness every
day. Before school and even during the school day when the kids are out
of the room, I can turn off the lights, lock the door, and do it! Do it
on my own, deliberately. Make it an individual practice until the
cavalry comes. Or if the opportunity arises, link up informally with
others who are doing it.
Chris Cullen, cofounder of the
Mindfulness in Schools project, offered these priorities to keep in mind:
- Be mindful.
- Teach mindfully.
- Teach mindfulness.
Rather than throw my hands up in frustration because I'm not able to teach mindfulness the way I'd like to, focus on
being
mindful. That is a great start! And if that's all I can manage, then
that is enough! It is a worthy accomplishment to succeed at that first
step. If you're doing it, you're doing a good job! Success is not
opening the refrigerator or turning on the cell phone!
The missing piece: Caring for teachers
Teachers cannot solve the
whole problem of fixing what is wrong with public education. Because we
are the ones on the front line, we need to cultivate
self-compassion
- so we can stay in the job! Someone at the conference said they
realized they had to make a choice between changing their mind or
leaving their job.
Our schools aren't failing. Our kids
aren't failing. Our schools are failing our teachers. The missing piece
is taking care of our teachers. When you're doing your best in an
impossible situation with an
impossible workload and your professionalism is questioned when you act
with deep integrity on behalf of children, and your core values are not
reflected anywhere in the curriculum, and you
don't feel supported or valued,
how can you create a safe space for children? Our schools are filled
with stressed out teachers who are expected to do more with less each
year. Children absorb the teacher's energy and ultimately are the ones
losing out despite the teacher's most sincere and heartfelt efforts. The
teacher's state of consciousness is the unwritten curriculum.
If
our schools fail to care adequately for teachers, it is essential that
teachers practice self-care. It is so much more satisfying and
empowering than being a victim and squandering precious time and energy
by complaining and feeling bad. That is precisely how I became serious
about nature photography. I challenged myself to connect with beauty
every single day. It was a way for me to unwind and re-attune after an
exhausting day at work and often occurred during a walk (for physical
exercise is also essential to mental health). Now I've added some quiet
time for seated meditation, for I find that it makes a huge difference
in the quality of my day. It clears my mind, weeds the garden of my
senses, and is time well spent. It's so easy to get caught up in the
endless stream of work during the school year, but it is essential to
learn how to put work aside and take time to care for ourselves and
enjoy our families. It sounds so basic, but with the extra demands put
on teachers now, the need for self-care becomes more urgent than ever.
Keynote and Breakout Presentations
Jennifer Cohen Harper, founder of
Little Flower Yoga
(The School Yoga Project) encouraged us to be our students' superhero
and to have a plan for when we're not feeling like a superhero - a song,
breath work, etc. Everything is harder when you're exhausted, so give
everyone time to relax during the school day. She asserted that children
make their own experiences and meaning when you slow down and leave
lots of space. There's no need to process everything! Allow some
experiences to simply
be. And if what you're doing isn't working, stay connected to your kids!
That is the most important thing.
Her program is based on five elements:
- Connect - with the world around us, to other people, and to our own inner experience
- Breathe - nose to belly breathing
- Move - joyful experience
- Focus - teach how to pay attention, mindfulness activities
- Relax - guided visualization or storytelling but also quiet time
She emphasized that the relaxation element is
crucial and makes everything else you do during the day more potent.
Cofounders of the
Holistic Life Foundation (Mindful Moment Program),
Andy Gonzalez, Atman Smith, and Ali Smith,
described how they use guided visualization, yoga asanas, breathing,
movement, chair-based
exercises, games, and student leaders in their work with schools. They
underscored the mentoring component (in which older kids help younger
kids) and the use of students leading their peers through mindfulness
exercises. In order to become a leader, a child must model good
behavior. An added benefit is that kids go home and naturally teach
their parents (and probably their dolls and stuffed animals, too)!
Daniel Rechtschaffen, who facilitated the whole conference, led us through a "popcorn thoughts" activity from his book,
The Way of Mindful Education.
It is a great exercise for elementary school-aged children. Explain
that your mind makes thoughts like a popcorn maker makes popcorn.
Instruct children to sit quietly and focus on their breathing. Whenever a
thought comes into their mind, they raise their hand (like a popcorn
kernel popping) and let it fall as the thought falls away.
Amishi Jha's
presentations were energetic and engaging and truly wonderful, but I
don't want to get into the neuroscience of attention here and encourage
you to visit her
website and/or the website of
Dan Siegel (who wasn't at the conference but is a major researcher).
The most poignant part of the conference for me was a guided visualization led by
Jack Kornfield.
Up until this time, I was interested but not emotionally vested in the
conference. After a very tough school year, I was at the end of my rope,
unsure about returning to my job in the fall. I'd even revised my
resume and applied for a non-teaching position right before leaving for
the conference. But I was open to inspiration and miracles. Jack
Kornfield invited us to see ourselves in the toughest situation we've
experienced at work. In the middle of it, there is a knock on the door,
and a luminous figure (for me it was H. H. the Dalai Lama) enters my
body and takes over managing the situation while I witness it as an
invisible presence. A while later, he goes back to the door and on his
way out gives me a gift and whispers some words. To my great surprise,
somewhere in the middle of the visualization I realized that, lurking
below my residual feelings about my most awful experience, there is
still a pulse in my teacher body. I was very surprised to discover this!
We took a short break, during which I retreated to my room to release
some tears. When we returned, I looked into Jack Kornfield's eyes and
told him that I'm a teacher who was
this close to not going back
for another year but realized during the visualization that there is
still a heartbeat. He held his hands to his heart, expressed gratitude,
and held my hands in his. From this point forward, I was fully engaged!
On the final day of the conference, there was a
panel discussion
of administrators and teachers who have put mindfulness into practice
in their own schools. There were many times during this panel discussion
when I found myself choking back tears and almost needed to leave the
room - because what the panelists and audience members described with
such joy was both so beautiful, hopeful, and inspiring
and in
stark contrast to my own experience. Here are some examples of what some
schools - both independent and public - are doing to promote a deep
culture of mindfulness and compassion:
- Whole school participates in an eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course
- Create a breathe room - a quiet, inviting space you can drop into anytime during the day
- Mindfulness as a special class, like music, art, and P.E. (Oh, how I love this idea! I want that job!)
- Every teacher receives chimes and a copy of Linda Lantieri's book on cultivating inner resilience
- Begin faculty meetings with a couple minutes of mindful breathing, or lead them in a moment of mindfulness.
- Faculty gratitude circles: Reflect on what you are grateful for that
happened in the last week, and send out intentions for next week
- Yoga class for teachers
- Offer stress reduction workshops for families
I love the idea of a breathe room! But paring it down to something simpler, you could establish a breathing
space in a classroom. I have a single-person "Quiet Tent" in a quiet corner of my classroom right next to my desk (which is
my
private, quiet space). I've always allowed children who need some quiet
space to retreat to the Quiet Tent when they need to. However, it also
could be a place for mindful breathing once I teach them how to do it.
Someone
else spoke of bringing children into nature as an important part of
mindfulness. Read them some stories or poems (perhaps Mary Oliver or
Wendell Berry) to open their eyes. Then invite them to write or draw. As
a photographer, I might show them an image I captured and ask them to
consider why I took the picture. What drew me to that image? Where is
the beauty? How did it speak to me?
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| Pond outside the Sanctuary at Omega Institute |
There was a teacher from Manhattan's independent
Blue School on the panel. I had learned of Blue School from a panel discussion during the
2009 Vancouver Peace Summit
that included two founding members of the Blue Man Group. The school
looks like this dreamer's dream come true! The Blue School teacher
described a joyful, holistic environment that includes singing bowls,
singing lullabies, yoga poses, art, breathing, and children leading
breathing. She spoke of so much goodness that I couldn't write it all
down! The school also has a mindfulness blog, and parents drop in for
mindfulness on Friday afternoons. Wow.
The general
consensus was that mindfulness programs did not encounter anticipated
resistance but spread with joy - though it's best to take the time to
grow them slowly. One panelist suggested starting in kindergarten by
training kindergarten teachers and then filtering it up. They also
emphasized the idea of teachers practicing together. Even if there
aren't any school-wide mindfulness or yoga classes for faculty and
staff, a small group of colleagues could meet and practice mindful
breathing for ten minutes before school, to set the tone for the day.
It's much like having a workout buddy. You are less likely to skip your
exercise if there is someone else to whom you are accountable.
Similarly, if your school does not have a room devoted to mindfulness,
you can cultivate an environment or create a space in your own room. If
all else fails, simply maintaining your own mindfulness practice makes a
big difference!
If you
do encounter resistance
in implementing a mindfulness program, there is lots of neuroscience
data to back it up. Dan Siegel's book,
Brainstorm, is a good
resource. You also can emphasize that you're not stealing time from the
rest of the school day curriculum but are replacing pieces that don't
work with what does work, and you are educating children to take care of
themselves. Furthermore, you can ask families to notice that their
children are coming home more relaxed.
Closing
At the end of the conference, we were guided to reflect
on the ways in which we were inspired and what we need as we go back
into the world and return to our classrooms. My greatest inspiration was
discovering that there is a heart inside me still beating to teach in
ways that allow me to:
- Reflect to others their own inner beauty and help them to love themselves
- Open the hearts and minds of others to the beauty and interconnectedness of nature
- Appreciate and acknowledge the light that shines through nature and
people - the essence that shines through the forms and connects us all.
My
needs are to practice myself and to feel
valued in my work environment. I could begin by sharing with anyone who
might be interested what I have learned from the conference and through
my own experience. Perhaps I am mistaken in assuming nobody would be
interested. You never know until you try! (
Postscript: Two days
after publishing this article, I received a bulk email from a teacher at
my school who wants to offer a yoga class once or twice a week so
colleagues can practice together!)
As I prepare to
return to my classroom in a few weeks, I will bring with me an excerpt
from a poem entitled "School Prayer" by Diane Ackerman, which Jack
Kornfield quoted. I intend to post it in a prominent spot and read it
daily:
I swear I will not dishonor
my soul with hatred,
but offer myself humbly
as a guardian of nature,
as a healer of misery,
as a messenger of wonder,
as an architect of peace.
Book Recommendations
Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children by Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community (Parallax Press, 2011)
The Way of Mindful Education: Cultivating Well-Being in Teachers and Students by Daniel Rechtschaffen (W. W. Norton & Co., 2014)
Little Flower Yoga for Kids: A Yoga and Mindfulness Program to Help Your Child Improve Attention and Emotional Balance by Jennifer Cohen Harper (New Harbinger Publications, 2013)
Building Emotional Intelligence: Practices to Cultivate Inner Strength in Children by Linda Lantieri (Sounds True, 2008)
Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain by Daniel J. Siegel (Tarcher, 2014)
The MindUP Curriculum: Grades Pre-K to 2: Brain-Focused Strategies for Learning - and Living by The Hawn Foundation (Scholastic, 2011)
The MindUP Curriculum: Grades 3-5: Brain-Focused Strategies for Learning - and Living by The Hawn Foundation (Scholastic, 2011)
The MindUP Curriculum: Grades 6-8: Brain-Focused Strategies for Learning - and Living by The Hawn Foundation (Scholastic, 2011)
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